


Whiteout

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [94]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arthur Finds Out, Arthur Whump, Canon Era, Caring, Falling In Love, Fever, First Time, Fluff, Forced Proximity, Friends to Lovers, Gift Fic, Hurt/Comfort, Injury Recovery, M/M, Magic Revealed, Major Character Injury, Merlin's Magic Revealed, Protective Merlin, References to Illness, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Snowed In, Tenderness, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 21:13:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: Canon Era AU. Merlin and Arthur are snowed in together after Arthur finds out about Merlin’s magic.Written for Camelot Drabble Holiday Exchange Fest 2017.





	Whiteout

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to archaeologist_d for the beta and to the mods for running this fun little fest. And to all of you who make this fandom and community so much fun: happy holidays! This one's for you :)

 

It takes three days before Arthur starts speaking to him again.  
  
“Can’t you make it stop?” he asks, standing at the window. Outside, the landscape is blanketed in white, the roofs of the houses only faintly visible through the mist of swirling snow. They had been lucky to reach the village—Cumbria? Carmarthen? Merlin hadn’t caught the name—before the worst of the snowstorm hit, so at least they have shelter and food for the time being; the only problem is that now they’re stuck with each other. “If you’re such a powerful sorcerer, this should be child’s play.”  
  
Merlin only sighs. “If you want a drought next summer, sure, I’ll just go ahead,” he says. “Magic requires balance, Arthur. You can’t just change the way things work and expect there not to be consequences.”  
  
Arthur doesn’t answer. Merlin helps him back to bed, his arm around Arthur’s waist and bracing him with his shoulder, and tries not to think at all as he peels off the bandage. Arthur’s lower leg is red and swollen, a ring of angry marks standing out against the skin, but so far the bite doesn’t appear to be poisonous.  
  
“Let me tend that for you, sire,” Merlin murmurs, and he heads off to melt some ice for water. That, at least, is something he can do.  
  
  


  
⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  
  
It was only meant to be a brief excursion. Arthur had been restless and out of sorts for weeks, snapping at anyone who came near him; it had been Merlin who had eventually suggested he might enjoy a bit of hunting. This late in the year, there was little game to be had, but they had picked up the trail of a stag in the deep woods and followed it, and for the first time in ages, Arthur had almost seemed to be enjoying himself.  
  
It hadn’t lasted long. The creature had come out of nowhere, roughly the size of a wolf but with the horns of a goat and the sharpest teeth Merlin had ever seen. It had taken Arthur down with its first attack, savaging his leg before going for the throat, and there had been no time to do things subtly, no choice but to fend it off in the only way he could.  
  
Even now, Merlin doesn’t regret that he used magic.  
  
He does, however, regret that Arthur saw him do it.  
  
  
  


⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  
  
On the fifth day, Arthur’s infection worsens. Merlin is tired by then, silence and lack of rest settling into his bones like an ache. Arthur is flushed with fever and mutters nonsense under his breath, but in some ways it is almost a pleasant change, to be spoken to after so long. Merlin cleans his leg and bathes his forehead, using some of the snow-melt to bring his temperature down, and forces a few spoonfuls of broth between the prince’s cracked lips. Arthur’s breath rattles in his chest and Merlin builds the fire higher, curling up on the mattress next to him to wait it out.  
  
He stays awake with Arthur throughout the night and into the following day, and eventually falls asleep in the mid afternoon, too exhausted to go back to his spot on the floor next to the hearth.  
  
He wakes to find Arthur watching him.  
  
“Why are you here, Merlin?” the prince asks, his voice very soft. “Why did you come to Camelot?”  
  
“My mother,” Merlin answers in the same tone. They are looking at each other with less than a foot of space between them, and he’s too drained still to try to tease or dissemble. “She thought I would be safer in the citadel than a small village.”  
  
He watches Arthur absorb this. The room is only partly lit, taking on that weird lurid glow of snow in the moonlight, and the prince’s face is half in shadow. He seems lucid enough, but his eyelids are sleepy and low and his hair still mussed against the pillow. The rest of the world might as well have ceased to exist.  
  
“And were you?” Arthur whispers finally.  
  
“Was I what?”  
  
“Safer.”  
  
Merlin smiles, a little sadly. “I don’t know, Arthur,” he whispers back. “That kind of depends on you.”  
  
  


  
⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  
  
“If I told you to leave, would you do it?”  
  
Merlin looks up from lifting another spoonful of soup. “In the middle of a snowstorm?” He pretends to think. “I’d prefer not to, sire, if it’s all the same to you.”  
  
“And if I asked you to kill someone, would you do it?”  
  
“That would depend on who you asked me to kill.”  
  
Arthur frowns. “I’m being serious, Merlin.”  
  
“So am I.” Merlin tips the soup into Arthur’s mouth so that he can’t talk, and says calmly over his splutters, “I’d kill anyone who hurt you, Arthur, if that’s what you’re asking. But I won’t be your weapon.”  
  
  


  
⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  
  
On the tenth night, there is no longer the excuse of fatigue to justify Merlin crawling into bed next to the prince, but Arthur allows it anyway, turning on his side to look at Merlin with grey-blue eyes.  
  
“Have you ever used it against me?” he asks, like they’re continuing a conversation. Merlin is getting used to it now, these strange little dialogues dovetailed between sleep and daylight, where neither question nor answer has any consequence and nothing is disbarred save dishonesty.  
  
“Yes,” he answers.  
  
“And would you do it again?”  
  
“Yes. But I’d prefer not to.” The prince blinks at him slowly, and Merlin ventures for once to ask a question of his own. “Does that frighten you?”  
  
Arthur’s answer is a warm breath against his mouth. “No.”  
  
  


  
⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  
  
On the twelfth night, Arthur’s kiss is like a question in itself, one that Merlin answers with a slow stroke of his tongue along Arthur’s lower lip, a gentle hand against his jaw. They don’t sleep naked—it’s too cold for that—but Arthur rucks up his tunic and runs his fingers all up Merlin’s ribs, and Merlin presses kisses to the hollow of his throat, along the fading memory of the scar that had almost taken this from them entirely. The prince responds in kind, rolling on top of him as if to keep him permanently in place, and Merlin thinks perhaps he finally understands: of all the things Arthur is afraid of, he is not one of them.  
  
“Touch me,” he murmurs, and Arthur does, reaching between them to palm Merlin’s cock through the fabric of his breeches. The heat of his hand makes Merlin moan and arch into the contact, and Arthur teases him, brushing his thumb against the head with feather-light strokes and laughing into Merlin’s neck as he squirms.  
  
“Always the prat, Pendragon,” Merlin grumbles, hooking a leg around Arthur’s hips to fit their groins together. He lets his magic spill over and into them as he moves, dissolving the layers of cloth until they’re naked from the waist down, and though Arthur gasps a little at the suddenness of it, he doesn’t seem inclined to flinch away.  
  
“Always so impatient,” he mutters in return, nosing his way into Merlin’s hair. “You can never just—let—things—be.”  
  
Arthur is the first to fall asleep afterwards, his whole body curved towards Merlin in the small space, their legs still hopelessly tangled together. Merlin watches over him until the early hours of the morning before he, too, succumbs to sleep, curled alongside Arthur on the narrow bed like a closed parenthesis, trapping their secrets safely between them.  
  
  


  
⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  
  
The last of Arthur’s fever breaks with the storm, and by the time he’s up and walking again—albeit with Merlin’s help—the snow has stopped entirely, although the drifts are still piled high against the walls of the inn and the roads will likely not be passable for days. He shows no signs of bringing up their midnight trysts in daylight, but there are moments when Merlin sees Arthur watching him with the kind of thoughtful look that presages a decision.  
  
“We should go outside,” Arthur says one morning, like it hasn’t been days since he was even on his feet. “This is a once in a lifetime event, you know; it would be a shame to miss it.”  
  
“Whatever you say, sire,” Merlin tells him, but it’s a few more days before Arthur can manage the stairs, and a few more days after that before they make it past the innkeeper into the village, and even then it’s only for a short time. Merlin has lost track of how long it’s been, now, but Arthur is starting to wear the beginnings of a beard, and both of them reek of sex and stale sweat, the remnants of old copper like blood. The drifts around the houses are almost shoulder-deep in places, sloping up to the tree line like moveable mountains.  
  
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Arthur says, his eyes shining like a child’s, and Merlin has no use for snow, really, since it ruins the crops and muddies the fields and it’s so damn cold in the winter in Ealdor, but he has to admit there can be a kind of beauty in it, too. It’s there in the way Arthur smiles at him, whole and safe and real, and chases him to the top of the closest hill to kiss him before dropping a handful of snow down Merlin’s pants. It’s there in his own retaliation, pelting Arthur with magical snowballs until he trips and gives in, flushed and panting.  
  
And Merlin thinks, _once in a lifetime_.  
  
  


  
⋆ ❅ ⋆

  
  
  
“A few more days, and we should be able to head back,” Arthur says sometime into the fourth week, sounding almost regretful. “My father will be worried. I hope he hasn’t sent out a patrol.” He turns, and the look on his face is as easy to read as a map, though far more complicated. “Merlin—”  
  
“I wasn’t lying, before,” Merlin interrupts. “I won’t do it.”  
  
“We’re not in the middle of a snowstorm anymore,” Arthur points out. “It might be safer for you to leave.”  
  
“There are bandits out there,” Merlin says. “Wolves. Strange mythological beasts that could bite my legs and tear my throat out. No, I think I’ll be better off if I stick with you.”  
  
Arthur’s expression doesn’t change, but there’s a smile in his eyes. “For how long?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know.” Merlin slips a hand into his and tugs him closer, pressing his answer with a kiss into the corner of Arthur’s mouth. “For the duration, I should think.”

 


End file.
